Transcription
My name is Nathan Hawkman. I'm the district attorney of Los Angeles County. With me up here is the, uh, from my office, we are, we have the deputy in charge of the DUI training and prosecution section, Garrett Damaron. We have the assistant head deputy of the justice system integrity division, Amarie Weiss. We have the head deputy of the justice system integrity division, Alan Yoklson. We have bureau directors Priscilla Muso, uh, and Marggo Baxter. We have assistant district attorney Gilbert Wright. Our chief deputy, we have, uh, Steven Katz. In addition, from the California Highway Patrol, we have the Southern Division Chief Chris Margarus.
Now, today we are here to talk about a horrible tragedy that should not have happened. Four innocent lives were taken from us. Those individuals are Juliana Hamore, 23 years old, of Huntington Beach; Arman Delcampo, 24 years old, of San Pedro; Jordan Partridge, 23 years old, of Los Angeles; and Samantha Skolask, 22, of Westminster. What happened the night of July 20th, 2025, and the fiery crash that ultimately took their lives should not have happened. We today are bringing the most serious charges we can bring against the two perpetrators of the crimes that led to the deaths of these four individuals. Those are the crimes of murder. And those crimes are being brought against California Highway Patrol officer Angelo Rodriguez, 24 years old, and 27-year-old Iris Samuron of Bellflower, in connection with this fiery crash that killed these four individuals and seriously injured another passenger.
First, before I get into it, I want to thank the California Highway Patrol, and in particular, I want to thank their multidisciplinary accident investigation team. That's the MATE team, MIT. This is an elite accident investigation team. In fact, it's one of the best in the nation. They have spent months and months reviewing every possible source of evidence to understand how these crimes occur, basically what happened, and develop a timeline around it, even try to understand the motivations that led to these tragic incidents. I also want to thank the two prosecutors who will be prosecuting this case on behalf of the district attorney's office. They can't be here actually today. One of them will be in court in Bellflower where this case will be, uh, tried or arraigned. Those are Deputy District Attorneys Dan Aman from the Justice System Integrity Division and Deputy District Attorney Brittany Venoi from the DUI training and prosecution section.
So, what happened? What I'm about to say is is not evidence. It is not the evidence that we intend to pres to be present in a court of law to prove each of these individuals guilty of the charges that we are bringing today. That evidence itself will be put will be placed and presented in a court of law. The what I am talking about today are allegations made in both a complaint, uh, and a motion that we have filed for the maximum bail for each one of these defendants, that being $8 million.
So, what happened? On the night of July 20th, in the early morning hours, at around 12:50 p.m., Officer Rodriguez was driving, uh, in a CHP car. And by the way, Officer Rodriguez was subsequently terminated by the CHP following this incident. But at the time, he is driving southbound on the 605 freeway, in approaching Imperial Highway near Santa Fe Springs. He is driving at over 130 miles an hour. He is driving without his lights or siren on and without justification to be driving at that speed. He is in the farthest left lane. That's the HOV lane, the high occup high occupancy vehicle lane, in the carpool lane. And he is driving at that speed, and in front of him, what happened is that we had the individuals, those four individuals, the car was being driven by Miss Hamorei. It was a Nissan, and it legally entered the HOV lane just ahead of Officer Rodriguez, but at that speed, at over 130 m an hour, he crashes into the back of the Nissan, disabling the Nissan at that point.
Officer Rodriguez then pulls over to the side of the road on the right hand side of the road. At that point, he has his lights on, but when he gets to the side of the road, he turns his lights off. And when you turn your lights off, you then disable the audio system inside of the patrol car. So, for the next three minutes, he is sitting on the right hand side of the road. The Nissan is disabled with its emergency lights on in the HOV lane, and he's sitting there for three minutes. He doesn't go ahead and radio in the accident that just occurred. He takes absolutely no steps during those three minutes to deal with the disabled Nissan that he has just crashed into. One point, he actually gets out of the car and inspects the damage to his own car, but that car is able to function and drive off. And he doesn't turn on the lights and the sirens or activate the audio system inside the patrol car. So, we don't know what was said at that point in time. What we do know is that after 3 minutes, he exits the freeway, and about a minute later, he calls the CHP dispatch, and he says at that point that there had been a collision of a CHP patrol car with a car that was out in the HOV lane, but he doesn't inform the CHP during that call that he was actually the source of the collision, that he was driving the car that collided, uh, at that point in time. He then takes his car, the CHP vehicle, drives then northbound on the freeway to get in at the next exit to circle back to where the accident was occurring. He ends up getting back about 6 minutes later, so roughly 12:59 a.m.
But what happened at roughly 12:57 a.m. or thereabouts, is that another car driven by Iris Salaron was driving at over 110 miles an hour. And what happened with that particular car with Miss Salaron is that not only was she driving it at 110 miles an hour in the HOV lane at that exact moment in time bearing down on the disabled Nissan, but Miss Salaron had gone ahead that night before and was drinking. She was drinking at both a restaurant and at a friend's home. She had actually said in a text message the night before, at the night of July 19th and now 20th, because this is the early morning hours of July 20th. She was going to get effed up, and she went ahead and she later tested well above the legal limit of 0.08 for blood alcohol. And so she's driving at over 110 miles an hour. She's above the legal limit for alcohol consumption, and she crashes into the Nissan in the HOV lane, lighting the car on fire and horribly burning the four innocent victims inside the car.
Later on, we have, we, we, when we evaluated this case, we went through the investigation that was completed by the MATE team. It took them, as I mentioned before, a number of months. It was an extremely detailed, rigorous, and thorough investigation, looking at every video video camera that was involved. Uh, looking at every type of evidence that they could get their hands on. And at the end, we determined that the appropriate charge in this case is the most serious charge we can bring, that of murder. Murder in the in the second degree. Both Miss Salamaron, uh, and former officer Rodriguez now face a, a situation where life in prison is the maximum punishment that they will be facing in court. The, the arraignment on this, uh, proceeding will go forward tomorrow in Bellflower.
You know, it's, um, these cases are some of the hardest cases I have to talk about. Cases where this horrible tragedy could have been prevented had this officer not been driving at ridiculously high speeds for no reason whatsoever without his lights and sirens on. If the officer hadn't gone off to the side of the road and not called in this incident immediately, had this other individual, Miss Salaron, not been driving at incredibly excessive speed drunk while she crashed into this car. What we can only learn from this situation is the following. First, to the victim's families, I don't know what to say. Uh, it's, I, I can tell you this. We will bring the full weight of the law to bring a full measure of justice for the tragedy you have suffered. For, for the public, for anybody thinking of getting behind a car, either drunk or driving an excessive speed, or both, please use this as your lesson not to do it. Please understand that not only are you putting your own life in jeopardy, but you're putting innocent lives at jeopardy as well. And please understand that if we ever have to get to the point where the DA's office brings charges, that we will not hesitate to bring the most serious charges in these type of cases.